Re: Cygnus support

[Ralph Lange <Ralph.Lange@gmx.de>]

Sorry if I was not detailed enough.

Yes, Nick is right, this is about dropping support for the Cygwin 
run-time environment as a target arch.

EPICS Base on Cygwin has serious performance issues, every once in a 
while the compilation breaks because Cygwin seems to change DLL handling 
specifics, and - worse - their changing socket implementation needs 
regular updating in the EPICS operating system abstraction OSI layer.

For many of the nice GNU tools, the mingw project [1] provides native 
solutions that do not depend on a specific run-time library.
EPICS Base switched from cygnus-make to mingw-make a long time ago and 
fully supports the mingw on Windows target (creating native Windows 
binaries). (Which work nicely when cross-compiled on a Linux host, btw.)

Cheers,
~Ralph

[1] www.mingw.org


On 30/04/2015 10:41, nick.rees@diamond.ac.uk wrote:
> Hi Torsten,
>
> You have to distinguish between the Cygwin tools, that many find useful, and the Cygwin compile-time environment. I think Ralph is saying is to drop support for the Cygwin gcc compile environment, and require use of the Microsoft compiler. Thus the executables don't depend on the Cygwin run-time environment, which is a moving target.
>
> As an example of the mixture you can still end up with, I know for a long time we depended on a Cygwin version of gmake, but the compiler was still the Windows compiler.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Nick Rees
> Principal Software Engineer           Phone: +44 (0)1235-778430
> Diamond Light Source                  Fax:   +44 (0)1235-446713
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: core-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov [mailto:core-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Torsten Bögershausen
> Sent: 30 April 2015 09:33
> To: Ralph Lange; EPICS Core-Talk
> Subject: Re: Cygnus support
>
> Hej,
>
>
>   From my experience cygwin has some advantages over native Windows,
> like scripts, Perl, POSIX path names, long path names, xemacs..
>
> Are there any chances to give us an overview, which problems, troubles, .. ?
>
> That could ease the motivation for a decision, whichever that would be.
>
> /Torsten
>
>
>
>
> On 30/04/15 10:02, Ralph Lange wrote:
> > Hm .... here's a proposal:
> >
> > As supporting the Cygnus/Windows target architecture causes never-ending
> > trouble and uses significantly more than average resources, I would propose
> > attempting to drop cygwin support from EPICS Base.
> >
> > We have well-working support for Linux and native Windows, and IMHO cygwin was
> > after all a bridge solution until virtualization arrived on the Windows
> > platform. It seems not just being a moving target, but the wrong target in the
> > end.
> >
> > Should we send out a message on tech-talk, asking if there are actually any
> > EPICS on Cygwin users left?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > ~Ralph